A puzzle of GROW memories: Shabrina

After every GROW edition, we take some time to put together the memories and impressions, creating a colourful puzzle. Each year, the tint and final image are different, but all GROW puzzles have in common the joy of learning, sharing and stepping up. We are thankful for meeting you and living together this 6 weeks of awesomeness! Thanks for sharing with us your experiences, emotions and stories!

Here are some feelings from our GROWzavi trainers:

Shabrina from Indonesia, trainer in Galati

GROW was much much better than I expected! At first I thought GROW will be a regular teaching experience. But I was wrong. GROW is an awesome project. I not only made new friends, but I also made a new family. Totally a life changing experience!

I faced some challenges during my experience, at first I find it a little hard, but then I think I managed to get through it all. The first challenge was that I delivered alone. I’m a shy person and I’m not really experienced in public speaking, so somehow I needed to find a way to deliver my session in an interesting way so the teens won’t get bored. The second challenge was at the early sessions: my students were shy too! But as time passing by, they got better and better and so did I :))

Everyday and every moment I had in GROW was really good. One of my favorite memories is the 5TC, because at this conference I learned so many new things and I can feel that I improved myself a lot! The next one is the first session, because this was the first time I met my students and they were so nice! The last one was at the closing sessions, because even though it was really sad, I know I tried to do something good for them, and they also prepared me a surprise. I cried twice in that session, but I’m very happy I had them as a part of my life.

In GROW I learnt to speak in public, to understand Romanian teenagers, how to present something and so many other things. I also learnt from the manual, too. The material from the manual is really important for daily life. I learnt more about how to give feedback, how to manage my money and even about citizenship in EU. Not only that, I learnt a lot about Romanian culture from the teenagers, they were happily answer my question about Romania and even taught me to speak Romanian :))

After I spent some time in Romania, I realized that it has a really big potential to become a great country! The people, the old buildings and even the weather. I thought Romanians were cold, but most of the people I met were nice and really curious about foreigners. Even though I also met not-so-nice people in the street, still it’s a really good experience for me. Like someone said: “There’s no rose without a thorn”. Nothing is perfect. I hope I can come back to this beautiful country in the near future!